Mary Cain Breaks National HS 5000-Meter Record

Cain has qualified for three USATF Championships races.

Mary Cain’s 15:45.46 for 5000 meters at the Portland Track Festival on Saturday gives her another national high school record to go with the 800- and 1500-meter standards she established earlier in the spring and the indoor mile and two-mile records she set this winter. More significantly, the time accomplishes the mission – barely – that her coach, Alberto Salazar, had set for the race: It gives 17-year-old Cain a fall-back option if something goes wrong in her 1500 races at the upcoming USA Track & Field Championships in Des Moines.

As her local lohud.com website and other sources report, Cain, a junior from Bronxville, New York, was sixth in the 5000 at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, breaking Emily Sisson’s high school record of 15:48.91 and just dipping under the 15:46.00 “A” standard needed to automatically qualify to compete at the USATF Championships. Salazar had earlier told The Oregonian, “Suppose something happens in the heats of the 1500 and Mary doesn't make it to the [USATF] finals. Let's say she gets tripped or sick or doesn't run well. If she has a qualifying time, she could run the 5000 there on Sunday."

That 15:45.46 is not an achievement equal to Cain’s 1:59.51 for the 800 and 4:04.62 for 1500 meters, both of which are “A” qualifiers for the world championships in August in Moscow. Indeed, if she’d been eligible to compete, Cain would have been an overwhelming favorite to win the 1500 at this past weekend’s NCAA Championships. She’s still well off the Moscow “A” standard of 15:18.00 for the 5000. But her experience at the 5-K thus far is limited, and why quibble? She has national scholastic records ranging from less than a half-mile to slightly more than three miles.

The winner of the Portland 5000 was Karolina Jarzynska, a 2:26 Polish marathoner, in 15:25.52. Treniere Moser, Cain’s sometime Oregon Project training mate, was second in 15:35.96. Moser already has “A" standards for the world meet in the 1500 and 5000.

Mary Cain is currently the fourth fastest American 1500-meter woman of 2013 after Jenny Simpson, Moser, and Katie Mackey.